Visa Europe's intranet had expanded very quickly, and with many departments taking on their own intranet with different navigation, aesthetics and back-end technology we were called in to unite all these intranets into one space. Visa wanted it to be easy for the departments to manage but also keep all the important information under one 'roof'.
After receiving the different department website content we decided to interview a selection of staff about how they currently use, and would like to use their intranet. These workshops proved very useful and after running card sorting sessions across several different UK offices we not only put together a concise site structure, we also knew what needed to be prioritised. Despite the thousands of pages on the new intranet we found that 3 simple headings could accommodate all of Visas needs. We re-tested this structure with a group of staff to be sure it was the right option for them.
Managing each departments priorities was our next challenge. Everyone wanted a space on the home page, and from our research we found that people used the intranet in very different ways. Sitting with each stakeholder and sketching out home page options helped us clarify exactly how they wanted to be represented on the home page. We decided to go with a module approach, so that users could select the home page modules that were relevant to them. Important information like company announcements and HR forms were permanent features but other areas could be switched on and off, and dragged around to the users own preference.
Whilst in the visual design phase we went through several rounds of testing with staff members, an engaging visual design was a priority for our client but it was also important that we kept the design on-brand and usable.
Since this is an extremely new and different system to anything Visa had used before we decided to start off with a javascript overlay to point out the important features to our users. This help overlay could be switched on and off at any point.
